What does sustainability mean to business? Is it about reducing environmental impact? Or maybe about improving reputation through CSR activities? Is it worth it? How can we translate this sustainable business vision into actual business operations? How can we align commercial performance to sustainability for the long run? Those are questions that many leaders and company executives ask themselves when being faced with the challenge of adopting sustainability in their organisations.

The truth is, if truly embedded into every part of the business, sustainability can offer tremendous competitive advantages.

This is not something I just made up. Many studies and even my own research have shown that embracing sustainability and effectively managing the triple bottom line can be a key driver for innovation, growth and progress.

A recent survey by BSI and Verdantix confirms that yet again.

150 sustainability executives from 20 industry sectors, including retail and consumer products, consumer services, manufacturing, business and financial services, oil and gas, utilities and mining were part of the research, depicting a fairly sound representation of organisational leadership.

The overall finding was that the majority of business executives (70%) identify sustainability as key growth driver, however, connecting sustainability to overall financial and business performance still remains a challenge with only 51% believing that sustainability issues will impact their firm’s financial performance over the next two years.

This year international business and political leaders met again at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos to discuss politics, economics and social issues as well as trends and solutions for future transformation. At my agency Brandzeichen, which is part of the Ketchum network, I recently had the pleasure of listening to a very insightful webinar about the key topics of the WEF. The webinar was held by Rob Flaherty, CEO of Ketchum, and Barri Rafferty, CEO for North America at Ketchum.

While listening I wrote down a few things that got my attention - these impressions are what I want to share with you today, after having done some additional research.

The following eight key areas were the focus of the 2014 World Economic Forum in Davos.

#1 Youth unemployment

According to the Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny, youth unemployment is Europe's "single biggest crisis". Why? Because 1 in 4 youth are unemployed. That's a scary number!

Noticeable trends towards solving this problem are the transition back to vocational studies, increased opportunities to work from home and entrepreneurism. Literacy is key to end extreme income divide and poverty.

The major players to help tackle this issue are business, government and civil society - or the Golden Triangle.

Today people increasingly demand corporate responsibility and social consciousness from brands to strike the triple bottom line balance: 69% of respondents in a research by Havas say they expect enterprises to make the world a better place. For the first time ever though, these expectations are becoming a “license to lead” with businesses now being more trusted than governments to make a real positive change towards a sustainable future. Such is the major finding of this year’s Edelman Trust Barometer.

In its 14th annual survey in 27 countries among 33,000 respondents, Edelman found that there is a global gap of 14% between trust in business and trust in government. This number has never been so high before. Business has been consistently trusted more than government over the past years: People now expect businesses to lead on social change, not governments.

Nevertheless, half of respondents believe that the most important role of government in business is to protect consumers from irresponsible businesses as well as regulate those. On the other hand, over 70% of people agree that policymakers should be consulting with multiple stakeholders when developing regulations on business and industries. Businesses should therefore “foster an informed conversation that provides the context necessary to create regulation that is relevant and as effective in its ability to protect as it is in its ability to move society and business forward.”

My previous blog post about the psychology of social commerce was inspired and pretty much directed by one of the chapters from Brian Solis’ latest book: “What’s the Future of Business?: Changing the Way Businesses Create Experiences” (#WTF). I mentioned there that I was going to share with you my impressions from the entire book and this is what this post is about. (To see how his other work and books have inspired me, check out this blog post here too.)

Brian Solis has a way with words. His thoughts are so brilliant and well put that I find it extremely difficult to rephrase them (bear in mind, I am not native in English), so I’m never happy with the outcome. Which is why I chose to share with you my favourite quotes from his book. I hope you enjoy them! And please do tell me which ones are your favourite. Feel free to suggest more in addition to the list I’ve compiled! :)

Here we go:

Over the weekend I went to visit my friend in Stuttgart, so while on the train I finally got to read Brian Solis’ latest book “What's the Future of Business?: Changing the Way Businesses Create Experiences” (abbreviated as WTF – cool, right?). Of course, I read it in one go and I felt inspired by it as I have with each and every his work. Before I share with you my impressions about the book though, I would like to show you today just one particular thing I found absolutely fascinating – an infographic explaining what drives shopping decisions.

In chapter 12 of WTF, Brian Solis argues that to design experiences and trigger emotions brands have to have an understanding of social sciences and the psychology of engagement in order to make sense of the attitude and behaviour of their target audiences.

To help us develop that understanding of “the A.R.T. of Engagement (actions, reactions, and transactions)” Brian Solis presents a rather interesting infographic by TabJuice that was inspired by Robert Cialdini’s work about the Six Principles of Influence and visualises six common brain triggers that influence consumer’s shopping decisions.